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Can the film version ever outclass the book?

The camera can love bad novels and ruin good ones. I call in evidence Stephen King and Evelyn Waugh . . .

John Sutherland

August 20 2011, 1:01am, The Times

The Academy does not, alas, have an Oscar for best “film of the book”. If it did it looks as if One Day wouldn’t make the cut. Thumbs are hovering downwards on that Anne Hathaway-starring adaptation.

The novel, by contrast, has been all-conquering. Translated, one is told (loudly) into 37 languages, it has racked up sales in the millions for David Nicholls. Having read it, I can see why adaptation might be tricky. Its narrative covers 20 years of a fragile love affair begun with a one-nighter at Edinburgh University and, thereafter, on a intermittent one-day-a-year contact (hence the title).

Film adaptation can do things no other narrative genre can. Lone Scherfig’s film, for example, can evoke the magnificent Adam architecture of Edinburgh University, with…

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